HEALING

Denise Maples: Faith for the Impossible

By Michelle Wilson and Barbara CornickThe 700 Club

CBN.com
 Several years ago, Denise was in the military doing vigorous exercise everyday.

"I had done years of running, so for a while my knee went pop," she says. "So after I got out of the military, it continued. I got an appointment to go get my knee looked at. The doctor said, 'We can fix this real easily.'"

Her husband Steve says, "The surgery was a mess. It actually did more damage to her knee. I would say within a week of the surgery the size of her leg decreased about half."

Denise couldn’t walk or go upstairs in her two-story house. However, she began routine therapy three times a week. She says, "It seemed like nothing was going anywhere.

"So I continued it for almost a year, and at the end of the year, they said, 'We’re sorry to tell you this but it doesn’t seem like it’s getting any better, and you might have to live with this for the rest of your life.'”

Denise became very angry and bitter.

"My husband and I had planned a weekend getaway, and we were gonna take off. But I had to run back into the house to grab something. In my bedroom, the TV was still going. It was The 700 Club, and Gordon [Robertson] was speaking. It was the end of the program but I stopped ‘cause he was going to pray."

Gordon prayed for Denise's condition, and Denise believed it was for her.

"We get to the hotel," she says. "He and I started to walk around the hotel, and I saw a few steps coming up. We got to the steps, and my husband and I just walked straight up the steps with no problem whatsoever.

"We wanted to take a little drive. As I was sitting there in the car, I looked down at my leg and then I saw a muscle in my leg and the size of that leg was just the same as the other. I began flexing that muscle thinking, I’ve not experienced a muscle flexing in that leg for over two years."

One thing she hadn't been able to do was run.

"I began to run across the parking lot back and forth," she says. "I ran like a couple of times. I ran and I ran… I was just so grateful. God healed me. He completely healed my body. It was just a wonderful experience."

"Doctors didn’t heal her leg," Steve says. "God did. She was very specific in her prayers. She became focused for what she wanted from God, and she got it. That just builds faith. It built my faith."

Denise contniues, "God’s a God of so much mercy. I want everyone watching who wants a healing or something in their life that they’re praying for that seems impossible [to know] that God’s able to do what seems impossible. That’s the thing He’s looking for. He wants to do the impossible."